Is Akhenaton founder of monotheism?

I suppose most of you already know something about Akhenaton and his religion. So I’ll just post here some of my theories and questions regarding this interesting phenomena.

1.There is absolutely no historical evidence for some kind of „Exodus“. But I believe that there was some connection between ancient Jews and Egypt – just because usually every myth has some rational background. So I think “somebody” really left Egypt for Canaan. But who? Could it be some Aton worshipers forced to leave after Akhenaton’s cult was overthrown and Horemhab started to persecute Atonists?

2.It seems quite obvious from Old Testament that early Judaism was actually a “joint venture” of two quite different religions. The first was Sumerian/Akkadian cult of El (Enlil) and other gods (so it was polytheistic religion), which where together called Elohim. The other one was that of YHWH – monotheistic and really strange one. Could it be that YHWH was actually Aton (well, not exactly, but “something” what developed from Akhenaton’s cult?

3.It is still quite mystery how Jewish nation was formed. They have the same or very similar cultural background as all other Semitic tribes living in the area. I am for the theory that it was their unusual religion which singled them out.

4.Is it possible that such a strange idea like the concept of just one, universal god, can spring out of nothing? Among primitive nomadic tribes with no central government? I do not believe that. In my opinion it is almost certain that monotheism was “import”. On the other hand, the conditions in Akhenaton’s Egypt were almost perfect for creation of such concept – absolute power of Pharaoh, disagreement with Amon’s priests, Akhenaton’s most probable illness, which might have influenced his mental state as well, highly developed „philosophical“ system of Egyptian religion etc…

5.Circumcision – this is very strange habit and was as such regarded by all Jewish neighbors. As far as I know, the only continent, were we are able to find similar habits, is Africa. Can this be another clue?

And what about story like this:

Once upon a time, in the sacred land of Egypt, there was a king whose mind was not that of ordinary man and not even that of ordinary king. The name of this pharaoh was Akhenamon and one day, he had a vision. While walking in one of his palace garden, the sun shined through his scull and young king suddenly realized that the sun is god. And this god spoke to him:
„I am Aton, the supreme universal god. There are no other gods but me. I nourish all living creatures. I am life and eternal love. Be my deputy on Earth, and I’ll give you absolute power over this land. There was never king so powerful like you can be with my help.”
And the head of young king was filled with sun and his love, and so was his heart. Akhenamon listened to this god and learned from him that all other gods are dead, so they were not to be worshiped any more. So he changed his name to Akhenaton and built new city for his new god. He moved there with his beautiful wife and all his court. And he declared that it was evil to worship old gods, because they were all dead. And anybody who disobeyed his orders was punished severely. Many were tortured and killed. So it happened that Aton, the god of eternal love, was the one most feared and hated. It was very bad time for Egypt. Province after province broke free and people were unhappy and miserable.
So one day, the highest priest Ay and pharaoh’s general Horemheb held a secret meeting.
“Something must be done, general” said Ay.
“Yes. This new god is destroying Egypt and his people.”
„How is your army? “
„My men listen to my orders only. They worship Amon. They hate this new god.”
“It would be no problem than.”
“No problem at all.”
They discussed the details and went after their business. After few days Akhenaton became seriously ill. Believing that Aton will cure him, he insisted that he would lie in the open sun. He died quickly. Ay announced that pharaoh’s last will was to be burned, so his spirit would be freed. The pyre was made in the desert and Akhenaton’s body was turned to ashes and sent to the wind.
Young Tutankhaten was made a king. But it was Ay, with the help of Horemheb and his army, who ruled the kingdom. Ay persuaded Tutankhaten to change its name to Tutankhamon. The cult of Amon-Re was restored. But strangely enough, there were still some people worshiping Aton. Priests, members of king family – quite influential group. They tried to convince Tutankhamon that he had made a mistake. That Aton was the only god. Tutankhamon listened. He wanted to be a king. The real one. He hated being just Ay’s and Horemheb’s puppet. But what he could do? He had no real power. No friend to rely on. But he tried – and he died. Hi was buried hurriedly, in very modest tomb.
Now Ay felt strong enough. So he pronounced himself a king. And as before, Horemheb backed him with his soldiers. But there was some disagreement between Ay and Horemheb – the Aton’s cult was still alive.
„We must get rid of all of them!“ insisted general. “They are real threat! They are seeking power!”
But Ay objected. He had a good reason for that – some of his friends and even members of his family were Atonists.
“Who is holding Ay on the throne?” told Horemheb to himself. “I am! What real power does he have? None! Who has the power? I have! If I give an order….“ And so he did. Ay was murdered and Horemheb made himself a pharaoh. He was obsessed with the idea that there is no place for “lepros” (how he called Atonists) in his empire. He ordered them arrested. But he was too afraid to kill them. They were members of the most privileged families. Some of them with royal blood in their veins. And some of them were priests. “No more priest killing”, he thought. He had enough bad dreaming because of Ay. “What can I know? What if gods do not tolerate murder of priest?” He decided to “cure them” – by hard work in a quarry. But really strange thing happened – the harder the work, the more miserable their conditions, the stronger their belief. Well, some of them converted. Some of them died by disease, exhaustion or accident but there were still more then enough of them to spread the plague. Some of them tried to convert their guards. Successfully. “I need a more permanent solution to my problem,” thought Horemheb. “Let’s send them away.“ He sent for leaders of Atonists.
“I’ll let you go.“
„Will you?“ asked one of the priests. There was neither fear nor reverence in his voice. He never considered Horemheb a king. To him, he was just a traitor, murderer and usurper.
“Yes, I will,” ignored Horemheb priest’s disrespect. „You will be led to desert by my soldiers. From there you can go wherever you want. Only if you ever try return to Egypt, you will be killed. Understand?”
“To desert?” asked priest, and there was sarcastic laugh in his voice. “How generous are you! Why not to kill us all right away? You know perfectly well that we have no chance in wilderness.”
“You must trust your god,” said Horemheb mockingly. “If you trust him, I am sure he will lead you to safety.”
And so the small group of Atonists were led to desert a left in the middle of nowhere. Most of them were quite reconciled with the idea that they were just going to die on the spot. They had absolutely no idea were to go. But the highest priest was thinking about Horemheb’s words. „Why not?“ asked himself. “Shall we wait here for our own death? Or shall we try to find the way out?” He stepped out and addressed the crowd. He talked about god, how good is he and how much he cares about his people. That he never let them to die. He talked about new covenant and promised land. He poured courage into the hearts of his people. So they set forth. After several days they came to the land of Canaan. They found it in the state of chaos and disorder. Plague was killing inhabitants in big cities by hundreds and people were fleeing to mountains. They were leaderless, scared, confused. Also it seemed that gods of those people remained in the cities, locked and forgotten in their ziggurats. Was it because these people were angry at their old gods?....
…the rest is obvious…

 

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Interesting theory. I love dissecting the origin of religions, and this sounds like a probable theory on Judaism. I'll have to google it.

 

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Originally posted by Raha
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I suppose most of you already know something about Akhenaton and his religion. So I’ll just post here some of my theories and questions regarding this interesting phenomena.

1.There is absolutely no historical evidence for some kind of „Exodus“. But I believe that there was some connection between ancient Jews and Egypt – just because usually every myth has some rational background. So I think “somebody” really left Egypt for Canaan. But who? Could it be some Aton worshipers forced to leave after Akhenaton’s cult was overthrown and Horemhab started to persecute Atonists?
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(Welcome to sciforums,Raha. I think you're right about this alleged "exodus." What later became the Hebrews was a tribe of Egyptian nomads called the "Hibiru." As nomads do, they wandered up to Canaan with Moses (Tuthmos, the Pharoah). The rest is history.)
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2.It seems quite obvious from Old Testament that early Judaism was actually a “joint venture” of two quite different religions. The first was Sumerian/Akkadian cult of El (Enlil) and other gods (so it was polytheistic religion), which where together called Elohim. The other one was that of YHWH – monotheistic and really strange one. Could it be that YHWH was actually Aton (well, not exactly, but “something” what developed from Akhenaton’s cult?
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(I still think its strange that Jews and Xians say Amen after a prayer! That's Egyptian, too!)
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3.It is still quite mystery how Jewish nation was formed. They have the same or very similar cultural background as all other Semitic tribes living in the area. I am for the theory that it was their unusual religion which singled them out.
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(Obviously, they didn't want to stay down in Egypt, or maybe they were just wandering to find food. That's a good possibility. In any event, these nomads were familiar with the Egyptian deity. Aaron, Moses' brother, was a priest. Moses, who fought with his brother a lot, probably out of jealousy or something, had a vision of God that no one else had. I mean, Moses' God, burned bushes, etched stone tablets, talked to Moses in clouds of smoke. People in Moses' day thought he was one taco shy of a combination plate. You know what I mean?)
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4.Is it possible that such a strange idea like the concept of just one, universal god, can spring out of nothing? Among primitive nomadic tribes with no central government? I do not believe that. In my opinion it is almost certain that monotheism was “import”. On the other hand, the conditions in Akhenaton’s Egypt were almost perfect for creation of such concept – absolute power of Pharaoh, disagreement with Amon’s priests, Akhenaton’s most probable illness, which might have influenced his mental state as well, highly developed „philosophical“ system of Egyptian religion etc…
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(No comment. Sounds good to me!)
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5.Circumcision – this is very strange habit and was as such regarded by all Jewish neighbors. As far as I know, the only continent, were we are able to find similar habits, is Africa. Can this be another clue?
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(Personally, I think this is a barbaric ritual that needs to studied further in Western society. In Africa, they're still circumcising young girls TODAY!)

 

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There is plently of evidence of an exodus but maybe not a superantural exodus. It is entirely plausible that the egyptians would have foreign semetic immigrants. Parts of the bible use egyptian words and names. This kind of information is unlikely to know unless if the people were really in egypt.

The people pretty much destroyed everything related to Aten. One of the pslams shows a likeness to the hymn of Aten but I don't think many hebrews would be famaliar with Aten unless if they were actually in egypt at that specific time.

There are some minor health benefits to male circumcision. There was also supposed to be a minor exodus of some of the Jews into Ethiopia at the times after Solomon. This, the argument goes, that the Ark of the convenant was moved along with a gathering of priest when idol worship was practiced inside of the temple. We have found evidence of Jewish ceremonial sacrifices there as well.

 

Re: Re: Is Akhenaton founder of monotheism?

Isn't it Amon?

 

I think there are dfferent psuedo translations of egyptian words into english. For example, Aten and Aton.

 

Thanks MW. But this is little bit inaccurate. The Apiru/Habiru theory was the well discussed one. Nowadays most scholars agree that the word Apiru (misspelled as Habiru) might be a foundation for the name “Hebrews”, but the people where probably different (some parable – I am from Czech rep. Traditionally, the name for our country in many languages was “Bohemia” (from Latin). When first Gypsies came to Germany and France, they came through our country, so when asked, they said they were coming from Bohemia. So “Bohemian” became a synonym for gypsy. But gypsy were (in)famous for their free and chaotic lifestyle. So people with such a lifestyle (like artists etc.) are now also called „Bohemians“. So there are a lot of Bohemians all over the world nowadays, but they are neither Czechs nor Gypsies.)

Yes. Amen or Amon (both spellings are correct, Redoubtable). BTW - Moslems do the same – “Ameen”.

Unfortunatelly, this is just biblical story. We do not know whether somebody called Moses ever lived. What makes things even worse is the fact, that at least some parts of Moses’ biblical „biography“ is evidently copied from some Akkadian legend about king Sargon (the baby in the basket, accidental murder, service at king’s court etc.) As I wrote above, Hebrews did not come from Egypt. Most probably they somehow emerged amongst Semitic tribes in Canaan approximately 1200 BCE. There are small settlements from that era in highlands, which are like any other settlements around, with one exception – no pig bones!

Yes, woman’s circumcision is very cruel. And Jewish circumcision was also regarded as barbaric and obscene ritual by their neighbors even in ancient times. So the same question again – where the hell did Jews learn it from?

No, sorry. Unless you regard biblical stories as an evidence, there is none. On the contrary – there is a lot of evidence which contradict the possibility of such a mass emigration. Egyptian border was well guarded one. There are written reports which deals with escape attempts of single person. So it is unlikely that some large crowd (not to mention the whole nation) would go unnoticed. The only possible way is (as in my story above) that somebody was allowed to go. Somebody, who was supposed to be erased from the memory of people.

Yes, but it proves nothing at all. Canaan used to be a part of Egyptian Empire for several centuries before the first books of Bible were written – with garrisons of Egyptian army, Egyptian officials, merchants etc.

Or, As I suggested in my story, some Aton worshipers came to Canaan…

 

There are written accounts of the foreigners serving in the temple court and leaving egypt. It's also hard to imagine that someone would go to the trouble to write 3 different accounts of the exodus, match up all the place names, use egyptian words, and give a comprehensive set of rules. Also what exact resource says that all of egypt was well guarded. It's inconcievable that they could maintain a large force outside of the Nile delta.

Circumcision is often times practiced by christians as well as Jews. Perhaps they learned it from who they say they learned it from.

Unlikely that they could travel through the wilderness and why would they? The worship of Aten and the hymn of Aten is very much egyptian oriented. All of their beliefs coincided with the Nile and egyptian life. Once Akhenaton died, the pharoah reverted Egypt back to the old religion. So it's probable that Akhenaton had no true followers. Also if they did travel to Canaan then what happended to the Canaanites and their religion?

 

That is simply untrue.

It is more than plausable. It is certain. So what?

Absurd. And, even if that ridiculous assertion were warranted, so what?

 

Usually the skeptical argument given is that most of the old testament was somehow added during the Babylon exodus and the Moses character was created from the story of Sargon. The story of the how Moses, I believe, uses the egyptian word for sea of reeds. Similary, the use of egyptian words makes the claim more credible because a typical hebrew would not know how Egyptian's created their houses, the path from egypt into the promise land, or the Egyptian names. Nor would they be able to list the typical plagues that egypt expierenced such as the Nile turning red or the plagues of frogs, hail and lucust. Another example is that the word pharoah means a big house in egyptian. The implications of this are clear, in fact southern slaves in the US would call the master's house the big house.

 

The Documentary Hypothesis, in one of its many forms, is not simply "the skeptical argument", it represents scholarly consensus. (By tthe way, there is a related and interesting article by Halpern in the current BAR).

Good grief! The presence of semitic words of Egyptiam derivation is fully explainable by centuries of interaction between Egypt and the peoples of the Levant. On the other hand ...

The Wizard of Oz must be true! How else would they know about the Munchkins?

Your "plenty of evidence" is laughable and pathetic. Go read something.

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And what about my story, ConsequentAtheist? Sharp criticism of your kind, that's exactly what I am looking for...

 

Really?

 

Hey, CA, read my post about it again, please. What YOU posted is in perfect accordance with it...

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For example:

(might be a foundation for the name “Hebrews”, …

"might be" according to me means that there is some good possibility, but of course, we cannot prove it for sure. But the similarity is there.

"for the name" - see my "parable"

That "apiru" means "social banditry" or "thieves" or whatever is OK. Do you know some names of american indian tribes? Do you know the "real" names - that is, how they people used to call themselves, or the names like "Sioux" "Gros Ventre" "Comanche" etc., given to them by white men?

 

There is a greater percentage of egyptian words than in other parts of the bible making it unlikely that someone could forge it without knowledge that they were using egyptian derivations.

I don't think this interpretation is correct though. The amount of gold taken was only enough to form a calf and there's no reason to think that every hebrew pillaged the land. Also the census numbers may be wrong because there's only a short generation leap from the twelve tribes to Moses. It's therefore possible that other people from other nations joined tribes or that the errors in Numbers were the result of a scribal error. Yet at the same time, the story says that Pharoah became concerned about the hebrew population anyways. http://www.specialtyinterests.net/hebrew_numbers.html Also over the years there have been more evidence to the fact that Egypt had greater number of people. For example, it was used to be thought that Egypt could not have huge numbers of chariots as was described in the bible, but researchers have uncovered a huge chariots station. This site gives a good number of resources to check up on. http://www.muslimhope.com/ex.htm

 

Enough said. Sorry, Raha, but that kind of silliness is simply not worth my time. Chat with Medicine*Woman.

 

It is a question WHO is silly, than. You disappointed me a lot.

1. You do not read posts properly
2. You do not think enough about them
3. You pick up for answer the less significant problem
4. You post quotation instead of your own opinion, which in fact brings nothing new to discussion.
5. Your last post is absolutely unacceptable in decent discussion. If you thought my answer was silly, you should rather ignore it.

 

How devastating.

Quite the opposite. I prefer fact-based conversations over inane preaching and puerile speculation, and I seek to quote relevant scholarship. That you so readily dismiss such scholarship speaks volumes.

Get over yourself (on both counts).

What puerile hypocricy. This from the person who felt so enamoured with my interventions that s/he urged my participation pleading" "And what about my story, ConsequentAtheist? Sharp criticism of your kind, that's exactly what I am looking for..."

Look, Raha, have fun with your 'discussion'. In my (solicited) opinion, any book store offers rows and rows of fiction that is more intertaining while being no less speculative. Also in my (solicited) opinion, any one who, without a trace of embarrassment, equates "might be" with "good possibility" is so far up the creek in La-La Land as to be best left to his/her coterie.

 

Hmmmm....well, just for your information:

Quotations are good to backup ones opinion. Posting quotations only is useless and is equal to spamming, actually. I know the source you quoted, of course, so it was absolutely useless to me. And I did not dismiss it. I agreed with it. BTW - Why do you attend forums like this, to learn something or to show the world how well read you are?

What's hypocritical? Also I can see that you are in love with word "puerile". Yes, I wanted to know your opinion, because I made the wrong impression about you. I thought that you really know something. Now I see that you are just shallow, arrogant nobody with borrowed ideas and no brain and no manners at all.

So what? My story is just a sketch. And I had to post it in language that is not my first one.

Yeah, I might make a mistake here, because, as I said above, English is not my first language. But I am quite sure that everybody who knows how to use his/her brain would understand what I wanted to say.

 

Of course you did.

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In fact, it was suggested to you back on 9/1 by Brian, at which time you indicated that you "also need some time to 'digest' it."

Inciteful to the end.

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